EDITORIAL: Happy birthday to the U.S. of A.

America is 237 years old today and still a beacon of freedom for the world.

Every schoolchild knows that July 4, 1776, was the day our Founding Fathers formally adopted the Declaration of Independence. And most of us still remember some of the stirring phrases from Thomas Jefferson's pen, including,"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

And while it took great courage for the 56 men who put their names to the document, even those brave souls must have known that declaring independence from England was the easy part. Actually gaining independence was another matter. The Revolutionary War dragged on, even after the Continental Army forced the British surrender at Yorktown, Va., in 1781. Sporadic fighting continued until 1783.

Call it sovereignty or call it self-determination. Call it destiny, as some have. But one way or another, we have always called it freedom. And have deemed it worth fighting for.

It is no wonder that Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, referenced the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration, after all, got to the heart of the founding of our nation and cut to the core of the Civil War.

In the midst of his much different, much bloodier war, fought in part for the freedom of all persons in the United States, Lincoln found in that document promises never dreamed of by those who wrote it and those who signed it. When Jefferson wrote, "all men are created equal," he certainly didn't mean the slaves he owned, or women, or even those who were not landowners. It seemed to Jefferson and his peers that the Creator only endowed certain men with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - namely white property owners.

Lincoln knew better, and used the document to further the cause of freedom for those who lived under the lash, those denied liberty and the pursuit of happiness and, all too often, those denied life itself.

He knew, and the America forged in the wake of the Civil War came to know as well, that once the "self-evident truth" embodied in the Declaration of Independence is discovered, it becomes an unstoppable force.

More than two centuries later, we celebrate the founding of this great nation, "a new nation," said Lincoln, "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He wondered "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

In the history of Western civilization, 237 years is only a grain of sand in the hourglass. And we still have work to do. But as long as we remember the hallowed words, and as long as we celebrate freedom and labor to maintain it for all, this nation will not only endure, but continue to prosper.

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EDITORIAL: Happy birthday to the U.S. of A.

America is 237 years old today and still a beacon of freedom for the world.

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